This invention relates to a laboratory light box, and more particularly to a multi-purpose light box suitable for a variety of observation and photographic procedures.
The light box of the invention fulfills lighting needs for observation and photography of a wide variety of tests performed in virological, microbiological and clinical laboratories using either white or ultraviolet light. By way of example, unstained immunoprecipitates in gel double diffusion, radial immunodiffusion and immunoelectrophoresis tests are examined and photographed using dark ground illumination, as is observation of bacterial growth in the bacterial inhibition assay for blood phenylalanine.
Observation and photography of stained immunoprecipitates and of stained protein bands in polyacrylamide gels is done against a white background. A white background is also used for viewing and photographing plaques produced by viruses, and for reading complement fixation, hemagglutination-inhibition and metabolic-inhibition tests in microtiter plates.
The light box also serves as a highly satisfactory source of illumination when using a dissecting microscope for counting very small viral plaques or foci of hemadsorbing cells, for reading tests in test tubes, for various photographic procedures such as slide duplicating, title layout and negative retouching, and for tracing.
Various lighting devices for laboratory observation and photography are available for specific purposes, but none has the versatility of the present light box which is suitable for numerous observation and photographic procedures. U.S. Pat. No. 3,802,102, for example, discloses a light box of limited versatility.